


Catharsis

by kitkatt0430



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 05, Angst with a Happy Ending, Barry and Iris want to wrap Ralph up in blankets, F/M, Finding a dead teen during a missing person's case, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Multi, Nightmares, Polyamory, Ralph blames himself for a case that ends badly, Ralph just needed somewhere safe to decompress, Ralph's job can be stressful, and that became Barry & Iris' place, creepy nightmares, dredges up bad memories from Ralph's past, ignores the Nora and Cicada plots, very angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28071924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430
Summary: Ralph's had some cases end badly before, but when the search for a missing teen ends with a dead body it's clearly one of the worst.  He doesn't exactly mean to turn up on Barry and Iris' doorstep afterwards.  But he finds himself there anyway, hand poised to knock and a little afraid they're going to think he's being a nuisance.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West, Barry Allen/Ralph Dibny, Barry Allen/Ralph Dibny/Iris West, Ralph Dibny/Iris West
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Catharsis

Ralph can't get the image of the kid out of his head. Laying on the ground, eyes open but unseeing, shallow breaths barely causing his chest to rise... every evidence that the kid overdosed on something.

He'd called 911 for an ambulance. Ralph doesn't know how long it took the EMTs to get to the warehouse though, because five minutes after making the call, the kid's breathing stops altogether. The kid's heart stops a few minutes after that, even after Ralph started doing rescue breaths. Ralph switches from just breathing for the kid to full on CPR. He's still trying to keep the kid alive when the medics arrive.

They call it. The kid's dead. Sweet sixteen and he'll never see seventeen. He goes to the morgue instead of the hospital. And Ralph owes it to the kid's parents - his clients - to tell them the bad news himself.

Ralph's got a bruise on his face from where the father hit him. With Ralph's powers, he could have absorbed the hit just fine. But Ralph's just as angry with himself as that father is. He deserves worse than a single punch to the cheek. He wants to hurt.

But the wife drags her husband out of the room and then comes back to thank Ralph for trying. "I know you did everything you could to save our son," she tells him. "If you hadn't found him... without his identification, we might've never even known he..." she'd begun to cry then and Ralph made his excuses to leave.

He's got no idea if he's even going to get paid for this one and part of Ralph kind of hopes they don't. He let them down. He found their son too late and brought them a corpse instead of living, breathing child who needed rehab and therapy. Ralph's pretty sure they'd have preferred the stress of rehab and therapy to... this.

Afterwards, Ralph goes home. But he can't sleep. His eyes close and he's back in the abandoned warehouse, hands pressing on the kid's chest in a vain attempt to keep his heart beating. Mouth blowing air into a dead teen's lungs because he just can't accept...

Sweet sixteen shouldn't be the last birthday a person ever has. It's too young. He was too young...

It rattles around in Ralph's head until he wants to scream from it. 

Alcohol helps numb his brain enough to sleep, even if he regrets in the morning when his alarm clock wakes him to go throw up in the bathroom. Eyes red-rimmed from his hangover and his brain pounding in his skull worse than when DeVoe played body-snatcher with him.

He's had missing person cases end with a dead body before. But that wasn't a teenager. 

Ralph ought to go into work today. But he's self employed and no one lined up to interview for his next case. So he makes himself a toad-in-the-hole with orange juice as his hangover breakfast, showers off the smell of alcohol, and goes back to sleep. It doesn't help, though, when all his dreams are nightmares.

* * *

He goes for a walk and winds up at Barry and Iris' apartment, hand raised to knock on the door before he even finishes consciously processing his feet's decision to take him there.

Ralph's hand wavers. He doesn't want to bother them with this. And it would be a bother, wouldn't it? They all like him better these days, but he still feels like the outsider. The irritant. And it's worse now with his head swirling with self-loathing for taking too damn long to find that missing kid.

If he'd been even fifteen minutes faster...

His hand knocks without his permission.

Iris opens the door, takes one look at Ralph's face, and drags him into a hug. Not even a second's worth of hesitation. "Oh, Ralph. What happened?"

"Case went badly," he choked out, trying not to cry against her shoulder. Ralph knew he should pull away, but her hug feels so nice... and then another pair of arms wraps around him and Iris both and he looses the fight not to start crying.

"Come on inside," Barry says, rubbing Ralph's back. "I was about to make lunch. You had good timing."

Ralph can't really explain why that makes him sob quietly. His timing is awful, that's the whole problem. But he lets the couple draw him inside anyway, wrapping him in blankets on the couch and offering him comfort until he could calm down.

He falls asleep without meaning to, head pillowed on Iris' shoulder.

* * *

Ralph wakes up with his head laying on Barry's lap while the speedster is reading on a tablet. Tap tap tap, reading faster than humanly possible. Its mesmerizing and Ralph watches, more asleep than awake until Barry notices his eyes are open.

"There's a sandwich for you in the fridge," Barry tells him, bookmarking his spot with a final tap to the screen before setting the tablet aside. "Feeling any better."

"Sleep hungover," Ralph admits. "My brain is all fuzzy and my eyes hurt."

"Want some Tylenol?" Iris offers from where she's sitting behind her laptop, probably working on a story for her newspaper.

He shook his head carefully as he sat up. "I should probably just eat something. That, um... the sandwich sounds good." He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to feel more human instead of... overstretched.

Barry got up, his hand brushing Ralph's shoulder and squeezing gently for a moment before he headed over to the kitchen. He came back with a soda, some chips, and very delicious looking chilled roast beef sandwich, all of which Barry set on the coffee table.

Ralph slid the blanket off himself - and where did that blanket come from anyway - and popped the tab on his soda, grateful for something to drink. "Thanks, for, um..." Ralph waved his hands to sort of signify everything. It wasn't really an adequate thank you in the least, but it was all Ralph felt capable of at the moment.

"Don't worry about it," Iris told him, setting her laptop aside. "This is what friends are for. Do you want to talk about what happened?"

Not really, but... he did owe them an explanation. "I got contacted by some new clients yesterday afternoon. Their kid fell in with the wrong crowd, started doing drugs. He was supposed to be grounded after they caught him with ecstasy but the kid ran away from home to go party with friends on the weekend anyway. He'd been gone twenty-four hours and the police weren't taking it seriously because the kid had a history of running away and coming back a day or two later, hung over or high. It didn't take me more than a couple of hours to find out where he and his friends hung out to get high and... he was just laying there when I got there. Over dosed or whatever he took was cut wrong or something just..."

Ralph pushed the plate away, not really hungry anymore. "I thought if I could just... keep doing CPR until the ambulance got there, then maybe the kid would be okay. But he wasn't. He was dead."

"Oh god, Ralph," Barry breathed, wrapping his arms back around the other man. "I'm so sorry..."

"If I'd figured out where he was sooner or not gotten stuck in traffic or..." Ralph was shaking as tears blurred his vision. 

"You didn't do anything wrong," Iris told him firmly, moving to sit beside him, opposite her husband. She took Ralph's hands in hers. "I know that's hard to hear right now. You want to blame yourself for this because you don't know who else to blame. But it's not your fault. You did everything you could to bring that kid home."

He nodded, slowly, even though Ralph wasn't sure he believed her.

Iris leaned forward and hugged him again - and, honestly, these two gave the best group hugs - and pressed a kiss against Ralph's forehead before drawing back. "Now, Ralph, you should really eat something. You'll feel a lot better once you've had the sandwich."

Ralph nodded listlessly, feeling bereft as Barry released him too. But he ate his sandwich and munched on the chips and finished his soda. And, as Iris had promised, he started to feel a little better.

"Do you want to put on a movie? We found a copy of _Hotel Noir_ ," Barry said, hand on Ralph's shoulder and thumb rubbing gentle circles there.

Ralph smiled despite himself and nodded vigorously. "That sounds nice." And then a thought occurred to him that wiped the smile right off his face. "I'm not putting you two out, am I? I mean I just showed up with no warning and I can totally just go now if I'm getting in the way..."

"Nonsense, you're staying," Iris insisted.

"You're not in the way, Ralph. We're glad you came to us over this, okay?" Barry leaned in against Ralph for a long moment before getting up to put the movie on.

"He's right," Iris told Ralph. "You're always welcome here. And now that you are here and feeling awful, just let us take care of you."

Ralph leaned against the back of the couch and nodded. "Okay." He let out a shaky sigh. "Okay."

* * *

The movie was fun and Ralph does enjoy getting cuddled by Iris and Barry. Of course, that just reminds Ralph that they're both his type and he's very, very bi. He winds up going home late that night, despite Barry and Iris protesting that he's welcome to stay the night.

Considering his dreams that night are a confusing jumble where he starts kissing Barry in his office and pulls away to find it's actually Iris he's kissing with Barry watching... only to turn around to find himself in an empty alleyway, late at night with Rosario Dawson's character from _Hotel Noir_ dressed up in the super hero costume and insisting Ralph shouldn't be there. Probably because behind her was the kid from his case laying dead on the ground.

He wakes up super disturbed and disoriented, but he actually goes into his office that morning after picking up some coffee and donuts. He deserves the comfort food after the weird places his subconscious went during the night.

No clients that day, though, and he winds up playing video games all afternoon as a result. And he almost puts his last case out of his mind until he gets a paypal notice telling him that the bill due on it has been paid in full.

He closes up half an hour early and nearly walks into Iris as she's coming from her new office down the hall to visit him. 

"Come keep me company, then," Iris tells him when he admits he's giving up on work for the day. "You can join me and Barry for dinner again tonight."

"I'd like that," Ralph tells her, feeling a little lighter already.

* * *

Sadly, Rosario Dawson does not protect Ralph from the dead kid again that night. Ralph's dreams are a jagged mess of high school and overdue library books and a dead teenager in an alleyway.

It's weird, though, that it's an alleyway. His client's son died in a warehouse. Where's his brain getting the alleyway from anyway?

Ralph doesn't feel very rested as he goes into work and Iris spends the afternoon in a comfy chair she dragged over from her office into his, feet propped up as she edits a story from one of her freelancers. She only leaves his office once that afternoon, since Ralph still doesn't have any new clients coming in, and that's to take a call from someone named Linda Park who is moving back to Central City to join Iris' Central City Citizen as the new sports writer.

"She knows about Barry, so don't be too surprised if she figures out you're the Elongated Man," Iris warns Ralph.

"Is she going to be joining you down the hall or working from home like your guy who does the political interest stories?" he asked, intrigued.

"Down the hall," Iris confirmed. "You'll like her. Just be warned, she's Barry's ex."

"Was she at the wedding?"

"Yeah, uh... okay, so, let's see..." Iris pulled up some photographs from before the wedding - the nice one the Earth-X Nazis interrupted, not the rushed elopement that Oliver and Felicity crashed - and then passed it over to Ralph. "That's Linda with me and Caitlin."

"Oh, she was the other bridesmaid. I liked her - very competent in directing the guests into safe exists so that there were very few casualties. Forgot to ask her name, but I was kind of busy promising Captain Singh I'd give his husband a ride home so that he could go set up a police cordon around the church without having to worry about... Rob, right?"

"Yeah, Rob Singh," Iris confirmed.

Ralph hesitated a second, then added, "you know... you might want to let your brother know that Linda's coming back. 'Cause I could have sworn I remember him flirting with her during the chaos."

Iris smirked. "Ooooh, really?"

Laughing, Ralph went back to his game.

* * *

"I don't know why it's still bothering me so much," Ralph admitted to Barry over drinks a few days later. He finally had another case come in, to help vet some new hires for a security firm that had used him a few times before. He'd called Barry to celebrate with him; he'd wanted Iris to join them too, but she was busy tracking down an informant for one of her stories. "It's all getting so twisted up in my dreams too. Like... my subconscious keeps getting details wrong and now the kid I'm seeing doesn't even look like the one I was hired to locate."

"Did you ever have a similar missing person's case before getting your powers?" Barry asked. "Or when you were still on the force?"

Ralph shook his head. "Not that I remember. And at the same time I'm having nightmares about this kid, it's also like those high school trauma flashbacks? You know, getting bullied in hallways, being chased by the librarian for forgetting to return books, not being able to find a parking spot and knowing you're going to be late and they'll fail you and you'll have to retake all four years of high school..."

"They lost all your senior year's grades and if you want to keep your high school diploma and bachelors degree and master's degree you have to retake senior year all over again," Barry offered, shuddering.

"Oh thank god I'm not the only one who has those nightmares." Ralph slumped in his seat. "Those are the worst, I swear. Like, not even dreams about Singh firing me from the CCPD are as traumatic as the high school nightmares." He kind of regrets mentioning the whole 'fired from the CCPD' thing immediately, but... it was definitely up there in awful experiences that haunted his nightmares. Even if it was an uncomfortable reminder that he and Barry hadn't always been friends.

"It's because they're so unsettling," Barry said, not seeming to have been ruffled by the reference. "I wouldn't say they're my worst nightmares, but with other things I wake up scared or angry. High school nightmares are just this awful sense of resignation and recognition that you always knew you'd never really escaped those halls."

"Ugh..." Ralph shivered and drank his beer.

"Well, maybe this triggered some memory of high school for you, since the kid was sixteen," Barry offered. "The last time I had repetitive high school nightmares was after the biggest bully from my graduating class gained the ability to turn to steel and decided that it was totally the right time to reunite with Iris to be a creepy stalker with a crush again."

"Yikes. How'd Iris take that?"

"Well he kidnapped her and took her to our old high school. So I super sonic punched him which made him lose focus on his powers, bringing him down to normal. And then Iris regular punched him and knocked him out cold because she throws a damn good right hook."

Ralph grinned; they always were something of a battle couple weren't they. It really shouldn't be so attractive. But it was. It was so hot, imagining the two of them tag teaming their old nemesis to a stand still together.

He really needed to get over this crush on them before things got awkward.

"Well, I guess I'll be taking a look through my old year books, see what comes to mind."

Barry reached over and took Ralph's hand. "You can always crash at our place if you remember something upsetting, okay? Even if it's a god awful hour of the morning."

Swallowing hard and desperately trying not to blush, Ralph nodded. "Got it," he promised and hoped he didn't sound as squeaky to Barry as he did to himself.

* * *

Ralph starts with his senior yearbook. Flips through the pages. And while he recognizes scenes from his nightmares as the backdrops to normal, everyday yearbook photographs, nothing triggers recognition of the boy in the alleyway. 

Frustrated, Ralph puts the yearbook back up on the shelf. Pours himself a glass of wine, plays some jazz music, and tries to unwind. Maybe it'll help him get his head back on straight.

It doesn't help. If anything, his nightmares are worse. This time there are ninjas in the walls of his high school that are trying to kill him. He runs into the library to hide and comes out in the alleyway. Ralph's crying when he wakes up and he doesn't know why.

* * *

The restaurant is really nice. Ralph's not really sure why Barry and Iris wanted him to go out with them so badly, but he suspects they're still worried about him and his nightmares. 

It's nice, though. Ralph likes the way it the candlelight on the table flickers across Barry and Iris' faces. They split a bottle of wine and talk about how their days went and... and it feels kind of like a date. Which is totally just wishful thinking, but...

Iris kisses his cheek at the end of the night and he goes home feeling giddy. His dreams aren't quite as awful afterwards, but it's still sticking in his head and he's got three yearbooks to go.

* * *

The junior yearbook is a bust too. But sophomore year, Ralph flips through the pages and comes to a stop after the rows and rows of single photographs for every student are exhausted. Because there's a remembrance page. In honor of Jason Theodore Meyer.

The boy from Ralph's nightmares.

He remembers the alleyway now.

* * *

It's two in the morning and Ralph is sitting in Barry and Iris' living room, hands wrapped around a cup of chamomile tea while he tells them, eyes fixed ahead of him, about the boy in his nightmares.

"His name was Jason and it was his sixteenth birthday. I didn't know him very well - he'd transferred to our school in the middle of the year and it was more that we had friends in common than we were friends ourselves. We were all out partying at this youth center that made itself up to be a club for teens on Fridays and Saturdays. No alcohol and no drugs allowed and lights out at one AM. We'd go there a lot, but I think it was Jason's first time." Ralph's voice shook a little and Iris curled around him on one side while Barry did the same on the other.

"It turned out Jason transferred schools because he'd been been doing drugs. His parents put him through rehab and then put him in a new school for a fresh start. Where he promptly reconnected with his dealer. Got two bags of... hell I never even found out. The first bag he shared with a few people. He'd used up most of it before that night, no problems. I skipped because I wasn't comfortable doing drugs in a place we weren't supposed to have them in the first place... but also, like, I'd done weed twice and had really bad paranoid trips both times. Ninjas in the walls trying to kill me type delusions."

Iris snorted in amusement, taking his hand in hers and settling it on her lap, massaging his palm with her thumb. "That sucks. I usually just get a nice mellow from it. And the munchies."

"What about you, Bar?" Ralph asked, the nickname slipping out like it was meant to pass his lips. God... he wanted these two so much...

"I had a roommate who made weed brownies all the time. First time he did it, he didn't tell me what the 'secret ingredient' was. So I spent most of the day watching my hand move." Barry chuckled at the memory. "It was fun, but I was still pissed off he didn't tell me beforehand. Though I might've had a small piece of his brownies every once and a while anyway."

Ralph chuckled in amusement at the thought of Barry, of all people, getting high. The two of them were probably adorable, though Ralph supposed drunk Barry from the bachelor party was a good example of what mellow and high Barry would have been like.

"Well, it definitely wasn't weed Jason had. And the second bag was cut with something... toxic. He got sick in the alley after the flashing lights drove him outside." Ralph shivered at the memory. It was cold outside that night and Ralph had forgotten his jacket at the coat check inside. "He started seizing and the other kids freaked and ran off. I called 911 and he got taken away by paramedics. But I found out the next day, he died on the way to the hospital."

Barry kissed Ralph's temple. A soft brush of his lips that made Ralph's eyes flutter shut and lean into the touch. "I'm so sorry," Barry murmured. "That must have been so awful to go through."

"It was." Ralph sniffled and wiped at his face, feeling wetness on his face. "I guess that's why I made myself forget. Until now anyway."

They sat there for a long while, curled up together. It was so nice, leaning in against Barry's chest while Iris snuggled into Ralph's arms. It all felt so natural and right and Ralph wished he could stay here, wrapped up in them forever.

Eventually, though, Iris said, "we've got a confession to make."

"Oh? What's that?" Ralph asked sleepily.

"We've been seducing you," Barry said, voice gravely in his chest beneath Ralph's ear.

"Uh..." Ralph was awake now. Very awake. "Come again?" He sat up to find that Iris was basically sprawled on his lap and he blushed.

Iris sat up too and then scooted back over to sit beside him again. "We've been, uh, seducing you. Is that something you'd be interested in?"

Ralph's mind buzzed. "Yes. I... yeah. That's very... you two always remind me just how bi I am. Ridiculously bi. And that... dinner the other night... was that a date? Because it felt like a date. I sort of wanted it to be a date."

Barry chuckled softly and brought his hand up to cup Ralphs face, stroking Ralph's cheek with his thumb before trailing his fingers down his neck to his shoulder. "More like a pre-date. May I kiss you?"

"Y-yeah." And, ooooh, Barry's mouth tastes electric. Like the lightning that trails him as he runs and the hope he inspired.

"My turn yet?" Iris asks when Ralph pulls away from Barry. So he turns and kisses her too. And she's soothing warmth and acceptance...

"Come to bed with us. Just to sleep," Iris said, standing and offering him a hand up... and protection from his nightmares.

"Sounds good," Ralph said, accepting her hand and letting them guide him into the bedroom.

* * *

He wakes up with no nightmares. Iris spooning him and Barry wrapped around his front, each shielding him from the rest of the world.

The alarm clock still has a few minutes before it's set to go off. He's not sure where this is going to go and obviously they got a lot to talk about.

And Ralph is maybe more than a little worried about what Joe will do when he finds out. But that's a worry for future Ralph. Present Ralph is busy. Basking.


End file.
